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The Salamander and Other Gothic Tales
The Salamander and Other Gothic Tales contains eight stories by Vladimir Odoevsky (1804-69). These include The Salamander, The Cosmorama, and The Sylph, Odoevsky's three main metaphysical tales. The collection as a whole represents some of the best of Russian Romantic fiction from the first half of the nineteenth century. This is the first English edition of Odoevsky's work to be published since 1965 and six of the tales are here translated for the first time.
215 pages, Paperback
First published November 5, 1992
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About the author
Vladimir Odoyevsky
167 books24 followersPrince Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevsky (Russian: Владимир Федорович Одоевский) was a prominent Russian philosopher, writer, music critic, philanthropist and pedagogue. He became known as the "Russian Hoffmann" on account of his keen interest in phantasmagoric tales and musical criticism.
Aspiring to imitate Ludwig Tieck and Novalis, Odoyevsky published a number of tales for children (e.g., "The Snuff-Box Town") and fantastical stories for adults (e.g., "Cosmorama" and "Salamandra") imbued with the vague mysticism in the vein of Jakob Boehme and Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin.
Following the success of Pushkin's The Queen of Spades, Odoyevsky wrote a number of similar stories on the dissipated life of the Russian aristocracy (e.g., Princess Mimi and Princess Zizi). On account of his many short stories from the 1820s and 1830s, Odyoevsky should be listed among the pioneers of the impressionistic short story in Europe.
His most mature book was the collection of essays and novellas entitled The Russian Nights (1844). Loosely patterned after the Noctes Atticae, the book took two decades to complete. It contains some of Odoyevsky's best known fiction, including the dystopian novellas The Last Suicide and The Town with No Name. The stories are interlaced with philosophic conversations redolent of the French Encyclopedists.
As a music critic, Odoyevsky set out to propagate the national style of Mikhail Glinka and his followers. Among his many articles on musical subjects, a treatise about old Russian church singing deserves particular attention. Johann Sebastian Bach and Beethoven appear as characters in some of his novellas. Odoevsky was active in the foundation of the Russian Musical Society, Moscow Conservatory, and St. Petersburg Conservatory.
Aspiring to imitate Ludwig Tieck and Novalis, Odoyevsky published a number of tales for children (e.g., "The Snuff-Box Town") and fantastical stories for adults (e.g., "Cosmorama" and "Salamandra") imbued with the vague mysticism in the vein of Jakob Boehme and Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin.
Following the success of Pushkin's The Queen of Spades, Odoyevsky wrote a number of similar stories on the dissipated life of the Russian aristocracy (e.g., Princess Mimi and Princess Zizi). On account of his many short stories from the 1820s and 1830s, Odyoevsky should be listed among the pioneers of the impressionistic short story in Europe.
His most mature book was the collection of essays and novellas entitled The Russian Nights (1844). Loosely patterned after the Noctes Atticae, the book took two decades to complete. It contains some of Odoyevsky's best known fiction, including the dystopian novellas The Last Suicide and The Town with No Name. The stories are interlaced with philosophic conversations redolent of the French Encyclopedists.
As a music critic, Odoyevsky set out to propagate the national style of Mikhail Glinka and his followers. Among his many articles on musical subjects, a treatise about old Russian church singing deserves particular attention. Johann Sebastian Bach and Beethoven appear as characters in some of his novellas. Odoevsky was active in the foundation of the Russian Musical Society, Moscow Conservatory, and St. Petersburg Conservatory.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 7, 2018
Title story gets 4. The collection as a whole lags in the middle, but so glad I didn't reshelve this. Odoevsky toes a fine line between fantasy and horror, always situating magical potentialities within folklore and superstition of the 18th and 19th Centuries, and at best has us hoping their alchemy to be true.
A couple of the middle tales and their supposed uncanny nature haven't survived the test of time, at least for the imagination of this reader, such as the ghost of a man who realises he was universally disliked. You can't really blame Odoevsky in this instance for having been superceded by Dickens's A Christmas Carol, however. Elsewhere, however, stories such as the Salamander deservably sit in the canon of horror tales, with their lore of magic boxes, the philosopher's stone, and resurrected corpses.
A couple of the middle tales and their supposed uncanny nature haven't survived the test of time, at least for the imagination of this reader, such as the ghost of a man who realises he was universally disliked. You can't really blame Odoevsky in this instance for having been superceded by Dickens's A Christmas Carol, however. Elsewhere, however, stories such as the Salamander deservably sit in the canon of horror tales, with their lore of magic boxes, the philosopher's stone, and resurrected corpses.
April 5, 2013
Izdanje koje sam čitao sadrži samo glavnu priču "Salamander", pa ću samo nju i komentarisati.
Priča je podeljena u dva dela, stavljena u različite epohe koje su vezane za alhemijski proces, odnosno dolazak do Sampa(Jastva, kako bi to Jung rekao, odnosno lapis philosophorum). Pokušaj je neuspeo zbog gubitka identiteta, u ovom slučaju, preuzimanja drugog. Priča ima ogroman broj alhemijskih aluzija, počev od Paracelzusa i Valentina, pa sve do ognja, purpurne materije, vatre, i salamandra kao simbol koji se mora sukobiti sa lavom da bi nastao zmaj(zlato). To je sve srž priče, a oko nje se gradi posebna, koja prati dvoje Finaca i njihovo snalaženje u Rusiji, preplitanje sudbina, i dostizanje do njenog cilja. Bajkovit ambijent samo doprinosi ovoj mistično divnoj priči, koju vredi čitati u svakom slučaju, a pogotovo ako postoji zanimanje za hermetičnu nauku nebeske zemljoradnje.
Priča je podeljena u dva dela, stavljena u različite epohe koje su vezane za alhemijski proces, odnosno dolazak do Sampa(Jastva, kako bi to Jung rekao, odnosno lapis philosophorum). Pokušaj je neuspeo zbog gubitka identiteta, u ovom slučaju, preuzimanja drugog. Priča ima ogroman broj alhemijskih aluzija, počev od Paracelzusa i Valentina, pa sve do ognja, purpurne materije, vatre, i salamandra kao simbol koji se mora sukobiti sa lavom da bi nastao zmaj(zlato). To je sve srž priče, a oko nje se gradi posebna, koja prati dvoje Finaca i njihovo snalaženje u Rusiji, preplitanje sudbina, i dostizanje do njenog cilja. Bajkovit ambijent samo doprinosi ovoj mistično divnoj priči, koju vredi čitati u svakom slučaju, a pogotovo ako postoji zanimanje za hermetičnu nauku nebeske zemljoradnje.
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March 24, 2008The... Horror! Er, Gothic. Lots of cute references to Paracelsus.
May 9, 2015
These eight stories immersed me into another world. It was intriguing, fantastical, eccentric, and mystical. Good Russian gothic of the 1800s.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews